All the way back to the beginning you were burnt, that's what they all said, angel and demon and prophet and monster; your own.

.... toast? your brother says.

What?

You can hear Dean telling you to wake up, wake up, alarms banging in the brainpan; hell's bells.

It must be morning.

*

When you were only a kid, kissing your first girl, or your first Jess, hand curled crisp in yours like a fall leaf in a place there weren't any, not for now, just the gold and the green and the fog and the sea. Lecture: Native art. Dinner: you and your girl and California, and California’s always burning, or breaking; shaking herself loose from the earth, free at last.

That's you.

*

All your faults, your frailties.

Oh, you're shook, your first love and your last, a demon said once, in a girl's sweet body that crimped close, slipped down your hot throat, told you to swallow. But she meant your brother--first to fill you, eyes and hands and eyes; first to carry you, first to see you go up, and up.

*

Lucifer fries eggs in your kitchen, hooks an arm, asks if you slept well, baby, says it was always gonna end like this, us, domestic bliss with my best, well--you know you're never gonna do it, weak as you are, Sam, you gotta eat, spreadeagle (my favorite) between two cosmologies, what does it all mean, my burning boy; you want toast with that?

*Your brother slaps you. You brother says it was almost the end, man, you almost, runs glaciers over your brain, your face; lovers and lovers and others, and just like that--